January 28, 2008
Mark Your Calendars: Mr. Drinkwater to Present on February 22nd
We are pleased to announce that Master JJ Drinkwater, Director of the Caledon Libraries and an alumnus of our own fine institution, has tentatively agreed to present at the February 22nd Brown Bag on the subject of community building in Second Life. This will be a reprise and refinement of his earlier presentation at the Internet Librarian meeting. Mr. Drinkwater is a graduate of the School of Information at the University of Michigan and a major leader among Second Life librarians.
More information about the earlier version of the presentation is available here.
From the Director's Desk: Virtual Neighborhoods, Real Communities: http://www.thelibrarymilitant.net/from-the-directors-desk/2007/10/virtual-neighborhoods-real-com.html
Posted by pfa at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
Video: Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life
Thinking about why Second Life is interesting? Looking to persuade your faculty or administration that there is serious content there? Take a look at this video about Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life.
Posted by pfa at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)
How to ... Get Started in Second Life
This presentation is a quick introduction to help folks get into Second Life. It is designed to cover the basics you should know or think about during the very beginning of the process -- choosing your avatar's name, setting up your account, and from there forward.
Posted by pfa at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)
Why Work and Teach in Second Life?
I was asked to share the slides and content from earlier classes and presentations about Second Life with this group. Here is the first one, a slide presentation about the "WHY" of Second Life. There is a sound track with this (audio) so you can turn up the sound. Beware -- the Slideshare system seems to want to make the podcasts move along faster, so the audio is much higher pitched than a real voice.
Posted by pfa at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2008
How to ... Make Basic Clothing
This blog entry contains the content of the brown bag session for January 11th, taught by Perplexity Peccable, based loosely on the NCI Class on Making Basic Clothing taught by Afon Shepherd. Afon's class is class is recommended, and is offered by New Citizens Inc - join the group for more information.
Please note, all images will enlarge when clicked.
STEP 1:
Right+Click on yourself. Choose "Appearance" from the pie menu.
STEP 2:
Look at the APPEARANCE menu.
Clothing items listed that you can create are:
Shirt
Pants
Shoes
Socks
Jacket
Gloves
Undershirt
Underpants
Skirt
These are worn in layers, which are important in the garment design process.
* Torso & Arms:
Inner Layer (by the skin) - Undershirt
Middle Layer - Shirt
Outer Layer (arms) - Gloves
Outer Layer - Jacket
(NOTE: Jacket will cover Gloves)
* Hips and Legs
Inner Layer (hips) - Underpants
Inner Layer (legs & feet) - Socks
Middle Layer - Pants
Outer Layer - Skirt
(NOTE: The Jacket is the only item which may sometimes cross the waist and appear on both halves of the body. If wearing a long Jacket, the bottom of the jacket will cover the top of pants, but may not show if worn with a skirt.)
These can be used in layers to create the effect of a single complicated garment, when really it is a combination of several basic garments. The layers for various body regions works like this, from the head down and the skin out.
STEP 3:
Make new underpants.
a. Click the Underpants tab
b. If you are wearing underwear, click the "Take Off" Button. (bottom of Appearance menu)
c. Click the "Make New Underpants" button. (near top of menu)
d. When asked in a pop-up dialog window if you want to wear the garment being created, choose YES.
Make a new undershirt.
a. Repeat steps a-d above, only starting by clicking on the Undershirt tab.
STEP 4:
Now that you are wearing new sets of default underwear (which are quite modest), you may remove your other clothes.
For this class, remove the following items:
Shirt
Pants
Socks
Jacket
Gloves
We will not be making shoes in this class, so you can leave those on. While we won't be discussing each of these individually, you may wish to use any of these layers in designing your outfit.
Now that you have removed your outer clothes, this is what we should look like.
STEP 5:
Let's start with the undershirt we are already wearing. Let's tint it a different color so that as we move on to the shirt we can see the difference between the two.
a. Click on the Undershirt tab.
b. Click on the Color/Tint square (This is the bottom of the two squares that are white when starting a default new garment.
c. Choose a color
d. Click the SELECT button
STEP 6:
Now let's make a shirt. You should have the general idea by this point - Click the "Shirt" tab, and make and wear the shirt.
You've probably noticed the small pictures or images that fill the right side of the appearance menu . Beneath each pair of images is a slider. Start with the sleeves, and try moving the slider from one end to the other. Watch your avatar and notice what happens.
Stop at a point where the sleeves on the shirt are shorter than the sleeves on the undershirt. Afon pointed out that if you stop the slider at 2% the shirt appears like a two layer dress blouse, with a bustier and sheer upper layer. This is appropriate for evening wear and dressier ladies garb.
Choose a new color for the shirt - different than the color you chose for the undershirt. Your screen might now look something like this.
This is a good example of the layering mentioned earlier. Now, please set your shirt color back to white before we go on. If you really like the color combination you have, you may save your shirt and make another new white shirt before going to the next step. If you particularly like your colored shirt, you may wish to save it. If so, be sure to give it a distinctive name.
STEP 7:
For part 2 of designing your shirt, let's choose a texture.
You start just like for choosing a color, but click instead on the top white square that is labeled "Fabric."
This opens a dialog box to allow you to navigate your inventory to find the texture you want. You will already have textures in your inventory. In "My Inventory", you should have a folder named "Textures", and you will also have one in your "Library" folder.
If you choose light colored textures, you may also wish to tint them by choosing a color.
Now you can experiment with the various choices and options, textures and tints, until the garment looks the way you want. At this point, always SAVE the garment with a name that describes it so you can find it again.
STEP 8:
Following a similar process, click on the other tabs and make other garments, remembering to experiment by combining layers for special effects.
STEP 9:
When you have made at least a shirt and a pair of pants, or have combined a number of garments into a look you like, and have saved each garment with its own name, you are ready to make an outfit.
a. Click the button "Make Outfit"
b. Check the boxes for the garments you made and included in your new look.
c. Change the name of the Outfit to something distinctive. I like to start mine with the first name of my avatar to make them easier to find in my inventory.
d. Click SAVE.
e. The clothes will appear in your inventory in a folder with the name you chose.
You can wear your new outfit easily and quickly, even if you have changed into other clothes. Find the folder in your inventory. Right+Click on the folder. Choose either "Add to Outfit" or "Replace Outfit".
WARNING:
1. If you choose "Replace Outfit", this will probably remove your hair, any jewelry you are wearing, your shoes and socks, etcetera.
2. If you choose "Add to Outfit", it will not remove all of these other items, but you may find what you were wearing doesn't look very good with the rest of your outfit, and you may need to take off pieces of your old outfit.
MORE IDEAS:
Here are some pictures showing garments made with layering, tinting a texture, and other techniques. See if you can figure out how the outfit was made and assembled. Make up your own ideas and outfits, and have fun!
Posted by pfa at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2008
Why ... Make a Notecard
A dozen things you might do with a notecard. Can you think of more?
1. Capture a chatlog for future reference.
2. Share a poem with a friend.
3. Turn in an assignment to a teacher.
4. Give instructions or notes to students.
5. Write a letter to a vendor to explain about a purchase that went wrong, drop the notecard in their inventory slot.
6. Chapter X of a public domain book.
7. Collect notecards with various chapters of a book all into one place.
8. Create a tour with text and pictures.
9. Organize a section of your inventory that you don't use much.
10. Create a photo journal.
11. Tell a story with illustrations.
12. Create a mini-tutorial combining instructions and pictures.
Posted by pfa at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
How to ... Make a Notecard
1. Open your inventory. (Click on the button in the lower right corner of the browser.)
2. Across the top menubar of the Inventory window, click on CREATE. Go down the pop-up menu to "New Note".
3. A blank note window will appear.
NOTICE that in your inventory, there will be selected an item with the name "New Note". If you move quickly, you can type in the name you want while it is still selected. Otherwise ...
4. Name your note: Right-click on the "New Note" item listing. From the pop-up menu, select RENAME. Type the desired name. Hit return. If you make a typo, repeat this process.
5. Edit your note: You can type into the note editing window, or you can drag certain types of items from your inventory into the note editing window. Most common types of items to be included in a note are Landmarks, Snapshots and Textures, although you can include Objects (small ones, please), Garments and other Notecards! Basically, you can stuff just about any SL object or item into a notecard. Suggestion: you could use this to organize and store items in your inventory that you don't need often.
6. SAVE OFTEN!!!!!! The Save button is at the bottom of the note editing window.
Posted by pfa at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)
Swapmeet!! Teaching Stuff ("Last" Brown Bag of the Month)
Because of the Genome Tour and the way it still feels like it is January, we are pushing the monthly swapmeet to next Friday. The theme will be Stuff For Teaching and Teachers. Come share and gather teaching tools and landmarks!
Here is a TIP for sharing landmarks -- make a notecard to collect and organize them. The next blog post will tell you how.
Hope to see you Friday, February 1 at 12pm EST / 9am SLT; Wolverine Island campfire. *
Wolverine Island:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wolverine/39/193/27
IM Memetic Projects to joint the group Wolverine Community for access to Wolverine Island.
Posted by pfa at 07:51 AM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2008
Brown Bag, Jan. 25, 2008: Genome Island, Here We Come
This Friday's brown bag will be a tour of Genome Island, one of the foremost science teaching spaces in Second Life.
Genome Island focuses on genetics, its history, seminal research studies, current research technologies, and much more. Max Chatnoir is the owner, and the visionary responsible for incorporating engaging and relevant instruction along with ways to provide assessment and feedback to the students. It is worth exploring Genome even if you are not a scientist, simply for seeing the sheer elegance of instructional integration.
We will meet at, as usual, at the campfire on Wolverine Island, at noon on Friday. Late arrivals should come to Genome and then IM Perplexity Peccable for a TP to wherever we are at that moment.
Genome: Big Cell: (127, 128, 48)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Genome/127/128/48/
Hope to see you there! If you are new to the Second Life at University of Michigan community, please be aware that you must be a member of our group to come to Wolverine Island. To become a member, please IM Memetic Projects when you are inworld.
Posted by pfa at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2008
Mark Your Calendars! Tour of InfoIsland International February 8
Mark your calendars! On February 8, 2008, the SLUM Brown Bag will be a tour of InfoIsland International give by Rolig Loon.
InfoIsland International is an amazing space, both for educational design as well as for the sheer lush beauty and interactivity of the space. While it focuses on learning a variety of languages and cultures and will be of primary interest to the non-English language teacher/student, it is well worth a visit for other reasons.
More details will be announced as the event approaches. In the meantime, check out the Roligt! blog for background information to whet your appetite.
Posted by pfa at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)
Brown Bag, Friday, January 18, 2008
The SLUM Brown Bag this Friday (12:10-12:50 EST on Wolverine Island, 9:10-9:50 SLT) will be a discussion of setting priorities and goals for supporting Second Life education here at the University of Michigan. In preparation for this session, please take a minute to answer the following questions in your own mind.
- What are core competencies for teaching in Second Life?
- What are the skills you, as an educator or supporting education, most need to begin using Second Life or make your use of Second Life more productive?*
- What skills in Second Life do you have and would be willing to share with the rest of the SLUM community in a Brown Bag?
- What educational builds are you aware of that you would recommend for our group to tour? What SIMs have you seen that you think would be appropriate for education, but are not explicitly intended for education?
- What broad topics would you like to see discovered or developed in Second Life? (What are you looking for that you haven't found?)
* Please note that we have already covered garment building for professional wear, and have an upcoming session planned on developing notecards and display materials.
For those of you who are new to Second Life or interested in learning more, assistance *is* available! Classes are available, as well as personal assistance (on a limited level, depending on demand). Contact Patricia Anderson for more information.
Posted by pfa at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2008
Brown Bag 2007-12-14 (Notes)
ATTENDING:
JJ Drinkwater
Perplexity Peccable
Kinderella Bright
Philomena Flanagan
Memetic Projects
Vic Novi
Gillian Oh
Brunopesto Contepomi
Rudolfo Woodget
Trallfazz Vilas
Gyokuran Enzo
Ted Welles
INTRODUCTIONS
Departments:
4 - HSL
1 - Kinesiology
1 - Alum, School of Information
2 - Public Health
2 - Med School
1 - Dearborn (teaching writing)
RL Locations:
1 - League wireless
2 - Office
1 - home (not in Michigan)
3 - Public Health
DISCUSSION:
* Announcements
We received approval to distribute UM-logo apparel to our community in SL, and to set up a UM Spirit Shop. Location and inventory to be decided later.
* Proposed Structure for Brown Bags
A rotating schedule, including these types of topics in roughly this sequence:
- Skills
- Locations / Places / Tours
- Issues
- UM (i.e. managing the UM presence)
- Show and Tell / Swapmeets (share landmarks, freebies, where to find the best X)
- NOTE: Last Friday of the month will always be the Swapmeet / Show and Tell week.
* Possible Events and Brown Bag Topics
- tours of educational places
- about stereoscopic and/or 3D SL [NOTE: Trallfazz Vilas offered a dual-projector setup in Geo as space to explore this topic.]
- How To: streaming audio/video for live events (meetings, workshops, orientations, invited speakers)
- How To: creating animations (NOTE: Poser was recommended)
- Anatomy tools and resources (show and tell skeleton avatar)
- How To: making notecards and displays for education
- How To: Herding Cats 101 (how to teach in SL)
- How To: hosting events in SL
- How To: making exhibits without making problems
- Finding land for educational purposes
* Invited Speakers to Contact
- Tour of InfoIsland International with Rolig Loon, a foreign language and culture learning facility
- JJ Drinkwater on teaching in SL
* Goodies Shared
- Freebies: Basic Body Parts
- Full perms "Welcome Newbie" notecard, from JJ Drinkwater
- Moddable demo HUD distributed, by JJ Drinkwater. Shall we ask for a DFE student to create tour HUD? NOTE: HUD = Head's Up Display
* Desiderata
- Collect introductory information for students, faculty, and staff who are interested in joining SL generally and our community specifically.
- Post sign saying chatlogs being recorded
- Create Brown Bag Facilitators Kit
- Welcome to our Brown Bag Series - notecard in giver
- Market via local print publications, ie. The Record
- Market via other SL groups, NMC suggested
- Repeat tour in February; market widely. Repeat once a semester?
- Create group blog
- Build an inworld library of useful freebies and educational resources [NOTE: Where to put this?]
- Real World silkscreened tshirt for our group
* Policies
- There should be a stated 10 minute welcome period while we wait for Michigan time
Wiki/Blog:
- Create wiki/blog (open, reskinnable)
- Collate best bractices, getting started, etc. [NOTE: Berkman Center guide was recommended]
- Collect chatlogs
- Schedules, sessions, events, moderators
GROUP NAME:
Second Life @ the University of Michigan = SLUM
Slogans?
- Let's go SL-UMming!
- Welcome to the SLUMs
DEFINITION:
Official collective plural of wolverine is now "a maize of wolverines" (proposed by JJ Drinkwater)
Posted by pfa at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2008
Next Brown Bag: January 11: Making Basic Clothes
The next Second Life Brown Bag will be this Friday, January 11, from 12:10 to 12:50 at the campfire on Wolverine Island.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wolverine/39/193/27
Because of several requests about how to come up with appropriate professional garb in Second Life without giving them your credit card, our first session this year will be a brief introduction to making basic clothes. Basic clothes are those you can make yourself, without activating a credit card, or camping for money. Come to this session, if you'd like to learn how to make clothes like these:
The presenter will be Perplexity Peccable, and appropriate textures will be supplied. This is easy, folks -- the entire wardrobe shown was made in well under three hours, and this includes renaming, sorting into outfit folders, posing and taking the pics.
Posted by pfa at 03:18 PM | Comments (0)
SLUM has a Flickr Group!
To support creating and sharing images for both the blog and wiki, there is now also a Flickr group. Anyone with pictures of meetings, classes, or events on Wolverine Island, or of UM activities in SL, please feel free to request an invite to the group from Flickr avatar RosefireRising.If there is anyone else who'd like to be an admin for the group, please holler!
Flickr: Groups: SLUM - Second Life at the University of Michigan: http://flickr.com/groups/slum/
Posted by pfa at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)
SL Glossary
This is a small collection of terms that have come up as questions during the Brown Bag meetings.
Other (richer) glossaries are available:
* Second Life Wiki: Glossary: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Glossary
* Puritan's Guide to Second Life: Must Know Second Life Vocabulary: http://puritansguidetosecondlife.blogspot.com/2007/03/must-know-second-life-vocabulary.html
TERMS:
brb - be right back
griefing - harassment or unpleasant behavior that may target an individual avatar personally, or a group, or a location (SIM)
HUD - head's up display
moddable - able to be modified
newbies - people who are new to Second Life
noobs / n00bs - people who are new to Second Life
perms - permissions, settings that determine how the item can be used by owners other than the original creator
prim - short for primitive, the basic building unit used to construct the shapes of everything from plants and animals to clothes
SL - Second Life
SLUM - Second Life at the University of Michigan
wb - Welcome back
Posted by pfa at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)
Brown Bag 2007-12-07 (Our First)
Meeting minutes from the first inaugural brown bag session of the Second Life community of the University of Michigan.
DATE:
December 7, 2007; 12:10pm
ATTENDING (most, not all):
Bridget Jennings
Brunopesto Contepomi
Gillian Oh
Gyokuran Enzo
Hello Marksman
Kaiya Qunhua
Kinderella Bright
Memetic Projects
Mizzuga Dawg
Perplexity Peccable
Philomena Flanagan
Sladly Nieminen
Snotball Snoats
Ted Welles
Titus Darwin
Vitesse Vella
Wrenaissance Jewell
MAIN TOPIC:
Planning future brown bags and community building events for UM in SL
Freebies from this meeting was a large collection of T-Shirts. Unplanned freebie was roasting marshmallow on a stick to toast over the campfire.
Where were folks located:
- Public Health (7)
- home (2)
- LRC (2)
- office (2)
- Dearborn (1)
AGREED:
- Meeting weekly
- RL location for December 2007 will be Public Health, 2615 Crossroads
- Send topic of discussion in advance, via email and to UM Secondlife group inworld (if possible)
- Make a wiki to share chatlogs and facilitate discussions
- SecondLifeEd folks will promote Brown Bags to students in their schools and departments
POTENTIAL RL LOCATIONS W/ SL CLIENT INSTALLED:
- CAIDENT, in School of Dentistry (ITCS lab, open use)
- 2615 Crossroads, SPH (Classroom, requires reservation)
- Language Resource Center, LSA, Mac Classroom
FUTURE TOPICS:
General:
- how to decide on future meeting topics
- identifying land that could be used for educational purposes
- where can students exhibit and share and create work?
- a checklist for event planning and preparation
Skills:
- voice configuration
- safe places for newbies
- best places for education
- who and how to ask for help
- finding professional attire
- getting dressed, making outfits, making clothes 101
- building tutorials
- scripting tutorials
- how to stream audio/video for events
- things to do with textures
- building tours or HUDs
- tips for combined RL/SL events
- capturing class sessions for asynchronous viewing
- machinima
- using mouseview and taking pics in SL
- things to do with your Profile
- lag and how to prevent it
- finding/using animations
- creating custom animations
- navigation in SL, tips and tricks
- inventory management skills
Education:
- examples of uses of SL for education (UM and other)
- best practices in SL education
- tours to educational places + discussion/conversation
- tour of Wolverine
- SL for distance learning
- Herding Cats 101 (how to coordinate a class moving around SL)
- developing mentoring system for new teachers in SL
- bootcamps for new teachers in SL
- what is the learning curve like for new students in SL?
- do we need an alternative orientation for our students? (different from the regular SL orientation)
- what types of SL instruction and class activities best work with new students?
- what alternatives exist to the SL orientation?
- teaching in SL, lessons learned
- managing student accounts w money
- conducting constructivist learning activities in SL
- market penetration of SL in our student populations
Issues:
- voice or not
- rules or guidelines for effective use of voice
- checklist for event planning & preparation
- tech requirements for effective RL spaces for SL teaching
- is there too great a learning curve for classes to use easily?
- learning curve vs. learning cliff: does SL keep changing too much to be effective in education?
- do we need a real world pre-orientation before students enter SL?
- providing or getting tech support for SL for UM activities
- Doing field research in SL, getting started, logistics, etc
- marketing SL to managers and department chairs
- finding funding for SL projects
- do we want to have an open brown bag for non-UM folks maybe once a month?
- promoting open events to students and community (ie. http://hungryhungrycoeds.com/umich - lol)
Speakers:
- guest presenters on projects going on
- Giorgio Massei's Italian class in SL Winter term
Experimental Techniques Or Tools:
- group tour bus
OTHER ITEMS DISCUSSED:
- Getting permission to use UM logo on tshirts (etc) for our community
- Getting permission to share UM-branded freebies with broader SL education community
- Including alums and community in our discussions
- A freebie store for UM Merchandise on Wolverine
- Alumni should ask to join the group Wolverine-Community
PROPOSED WIKI TOPICS:
- what might be potential projects for School of Information DFE (internship) experiences?
PROPOSED FUTURE EVENTS:
- Enriching Scholarship: series of daily workshops in SL
- Inworld Workshop series with invited speakers from around SL with areas of special expertise (building, scripting, etc.) (Ted Welles offered to help pay to hire folk to do these sessions)
Posted by pfa at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)
To Begin the Blog
Welcome! This is the first entry of the blog for the Second Life community at the University of Michigan.
The University of Michigan purchased Wolverine Island in Second Life in Spring of 2007, and held its first class on Wolverine Island in October of the same year.
Here are pictures from our Flickr group collecting images of UM activites in and around Wolverine Island, specifically, and Second Life, more broadly.
Posted by pfa at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)